The life sciences are increasingly being called on to produce “socially robust” knowledge that honors the social contract between science and society. This has resulted in the emergence of a number of “broad social issues” that reflect the ethical tensions in these social contracts. These issues are framed in a variety of ways around the world, evidenced by differences in regulations addressing them. It is important to question whether these variations are simply regulatory variations or in fact reflect a (...) contextual approach to ethics that brings into question the existence of a system of “global scientific ethics”. Nonetheless, within ethics education for scientists these broad social issues are often presented using this scheme of global ethics due to legacies of science ethics pedagogy. This paper suggests this may present barriers to fostering international discourse between communities of scientists, and may cause difficulties in harmonizing (and transporting) national regulations for the governance of these issues. Reinterpreting these variations according to how the content of ethical principles is attributed by communities is proposed as crucial for developing a robust international discourse. To illustrate this, the paper offers some empirical fieldwork data that considers how the concept of dual-use (as a broad social issue) was discussed within African and UK laboratories. Demonstrating that African scientists reshaped the concept of dual-use according to their own research environmental pressures and ascribed alternative content to the principles that underpin it, suggests that the limitations of a “global scientific ethics” system for these issues cannot be ignored. (shrink)

Available for the first time in English, Roger's masterwork of intellectual history situates the life sciences within the larger context of French Enlightenment thought and the history of institutions.

Field Life examines the practice of science in the field in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of the American West between the 1860s and the 1910s, when the railroad was the dominant form of long-distance transportation. Grounded in approaches from environmental history and the history of technology, it emphasizes the material basis of scientific fieldwork, joining together the human labor that produced knowledge with the natural world in which those practices were embedded. Four distinct modes of field practice, (...) which were shared by different field science disciplines, proliferated during this period—surveys, lay networks, quarries, and stations—and this book explores the dynamics that underpinned each of them. Using two diverse case studies to animate each mode of practice, as well as the making of the field as a place for science, Field Life combines textured analysis of specific examples of field science on the ground with wider discussion of the commonalities in the practices of a diverse array of field sciences, including the earth and physical sciences, the life and agricultural sciences, and the human sciences. By situating science in its regional environmental context, Field Life analyzes the intersection between the cosmopolitan knowledge of science and the experiential knowledge of people living in the field. Examples of field science in the Plains and Rockies range widely: geological surveys and weather observing networks, quarries to uncover dinosaur fossils and archaeological remains, and branch agricultural experiment stations and mountain biological field stations. (shrink)

This article critically engages with the influential theory of ‘‘molecularized biopower’’ and ‘‘politics of life’’ developed by Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose. Molecularization is assumed to signal the end of population-centred biopolitics and the disciplining of subjects as described by Foucault, and the rise of new forms of biosociality and biological citizenship. Drawing on empirical work in Science and Technology Studies, we argue that this account is limited by a focus on novelty and assumptions about the transformative power of (...) the genetic life sciences. We suggest that biopower consists of a more complex cluster of relationships between the molecular and the population. The biological existence of different human beings is politicized through different complementary and competing discourses around medical therapies, choices at the beginning and end of life, public health, environment, migration and border controls, implying a multiple rather than a singular politics of life. (shrink)

This second edition of Life Science Ethics includes four essays not found in the first edition: Richard Haynes on “Animals in Research” Stephen M. Gardiner on “Climate Change” Christopher Kelty on “Nanotechnology” Gary Comstock on “Genetically Modified Foods” and a revised and expanded version of the chapter on “Farms” in which Stephen Carpenter joins Charles Taliaferro as author. In addition, Part III has been thoroughly revised with the goal of focusing attention on salient examples. Three new case studies have (...) been added: Robert Streiffer and Sara Gavrell Ortiz on “Enviropigs” Donald F. Boesch, et al. on “Coastal Dead Zones” Deb Bennett-Woods on “Nanotechnology and Human Enhancement” The first edition was praised for providing instructors with a stimulating text that will help students hone their critical thinking skills. That text is here enhanced with treatments of critical new issues, including global warming, nanotechnology, and the possibility that bioengineering may be able to change human nature. The new edition includes classroom discussion questions for use in provoking and guiding in-class discussions. Part I introduces ethics, the relationship of religion to ethics, how we assess ethical arguments, and a method ethicists use to reason about ethical theories. Part II demonstrates the relevance of ethical reasoning to the environment, land, farms, food, biotechnology, genetically modified foods, animals in agriculture and research, climate change, and nanotechnology. Part III presents case studies for the topics found in Part II. Two appendices include exercises to help students learn systematic ways of thinking through ethical dilemmas and notes for instructors using the book as a text. (shrink)

Following recent debate on the relations between philosophy of science and the sciences, we wish to draw attention to some actual ways of training both young philosophers of science and young life scientists and clinicians. First, we recall a successful case of training philosophers of the life sciences in a strictly scientific environment. Second, after a brief review of the reasons why life scientists and clinicians are currently asking for more ethics, more methodology of science, and more (...) philosophy of science in the training of life scientists and clinicians, we present two training models that could spur the discussion on how to meet the requests coming from the scientific community. We argue that in order to reflect on mutual relations between philosophy of science and the sciences and to foster proper interactions, issues regarding the topics considered, the features of educational curricula, and the institutional organizations should be addressed jointly. (shrink)

Although in the last decades increasingly more philosophers have paid attention to the life sciences, traditionally physics has dominated general philosophy of science. Does a focus on the life sciences and medicine produce a different philosophy of science and indeed a different conception of knowledge? Here Cristina Chimisso does not attempt to give a comprehensive answer to this question; rather, she presents a case study focussed on Georges Canguilhem. Canguilhem continued the philosophical tradition that we now call historical (...) epistemology, and always referred very closely to the philosophy of Gaston Bachelard. However, whereas Bachelard primarily studied the history of chemistry and physics, Canguilhem turned to the life sciences, medicine and psychiatry. Chimisso investigates their respective conceptions and uses of norms. Chimisso argues that some crucial differences in how they regarded norms, seldom emphasised by Canguilhem himself and indeed by critics, stem from the sciences on which they concentrated. (shrink)

This volume explores the intersection between early modern philosophy and the life sciences by presenting the contributions of important but often neglected figures such as Cudworth, Grew, Glisson, Hieronymus Fabricius, Stahl, Gallego, Hartsoeker, and More, as well as familiar figures such as Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, and Kant.

There is a crisis of valuation practices in the current academic life sciences, triggered by unsustainable growth and “hyper-competition.” Quantitative metrics in evaluating researchers are seen as replacing deeper considerations of the quality and novelty of work, as well as substantive care for the societal implications of research. Junior researchers are frequently mentioned as those most strongly affected by these dynamics. However, their own perceptions of these issues are much less frequently considered. This paper aims at contributing to a (...) better understanding of the interplay between how research is valued and how young researchers learn to live, work and produce knowledge within academia. We thus analyze how PhD students and postdocs in the Austrian life sciences ascribe worth to people, objects and practices as they talk about their own present and future lives in research. We draw on literature from the field of valuation studies and its interest in how actors refer to different forms of valuation to account for their actions. We explore how young researchers are socialized into different valuation practices in different stages of their growing into science. Introducing the concept of “regimes of valuation” we show that PhD students relate to a wider evaluative repertoire while postdocs base their decisions on one dominant regime of valuing research. In conclusion, we discuss the implications of these findings for the epistemic and social development of the life sciences, and for other scientific fields. (shrink)

The free-energy principle states that all systems that minimize their free energy resist a tendency to physical disintegration. Originally proposed to account for perception, learning, and action, the free-energy principle has been applied to the evolution, development, morphology, anatomy and function of the brain, and has been called a postulate, an unfalsifiable principle, a natural law, and an imperative. While it might afford a theoretical foundation for understanding the relationship between environment, life, and mind, its epistemic status is unclear. (...) Also unclear is how the free-energy principle relates to prominent theoretical approaches to life science phenomena, such as organicism and mechanism. This paper clarifies both issues, and identifies limits and prospects for the free-energy principle as a first principle in the life sciences. (shrink)

Investigators of animal behavior since the eighteenth century have sought to make their work integral to the enterprises of natural history and/or the life sciences. In their efforts to do so, they have frequently based their claims of authority on the advantages offered by the special places where they have conducted their research. The zoo, the laboratory, and the field have been major settings for animal behavior studies. The issue of the relative advantages of these different sites has been (...) a persistent one in the history of animal behavior studies up to and including the work of the ethologists of the twentieth century. (shrink)

A unique introduction to the philosophy of science with special emphasis on the life sciences. Part I presents elementary but fundamental concepts and problems in epistemology and their relation to questions of scientific methodology. Part II deals with case studies from the history of biology which illustrate particular philosophical points while Part III progresses to more complex ideas as on the nature and methodology of science. Part IV discusses the limitations of scientific enquiry and its relations to other systems (...) of knowledge and interpretation. (shrink)

In this thesis we have examined the complex interaction between intellectual property rights, life sciences and global justice. Science and the innovations developed in its wake have an enormous effect on our daily lives, providing countless opportunities but also raising numerous problems of justice. The complexity of a problem however does not liberate society as a whole from moral responsibilities. Our intellectual property regimes clash at various points with human rights law and commonly held notions of justice.

The successful decoding of human genome and subsequent advances in new life sciences innovation create technological presuppositions of a new possibility of justice i.e. the just distribution of both social and natural goods. Although Rawlsians attempt to expand their theory to include this new possibility, they fail to provide plausible metrics of social justice in the genomics and post-genomics era. By contrast, Senians seem to succeed to do so through their index of basic capabilities. This paper explores what might (...) be regarded as a Senian perspective of distributive justice in new life sciences innovation. The argument is that, by comparing freedoms instead of primary goods, the capability theory allows not only for the identification of injustices linked to natural lottery but also for their elimination through the use of new genomic technologies, including gene-based diagnostics, gene therapy, somatic cell engineering and germ-line engineering. These innovative technologies seem to have the potential to reduce variability in natural goods and therefore enable individuals to convert social goods into well-being or welfare. (shrink)

Both science and theology involve philosophy. They both involve reasoned argument, evaluation of possible explanations, clarification of concepts, ways of interpreting experience, understanding the present significance of what has gone before us, and other such eminently philosophical tasks. They both involve philosophy, especially when they enter into dialogue with each other. In fact, they involve philosophical thinking even when they may not be aware of it. In this paper I will explore a specific area of philosophy that is particularly important (...) as a bridge between theology and science. I am referring to the area of meaning. Questions regarding meaning are fundamental because whatever is said about the nature of life, by scientists, by theologians, or by anyone else, must be expressed in meaningful words. Meaning is like the ground we walk on. It constitutes what we need to proceed with our activity. Without solid ground under our feet, we cannot go anywhere. (shrink)

Life sciences and emerging technologies raise a plethora of issues. Besides practical, bioethical and policy issues, they have broader, cultural implications as well, affecting and reflecting our zeitgeist and world-view, challenging our understanding of life, nature and ourselves as human beings, and reframing the human condition on a planetary scale. In accordance with the aims and scope of the journal, LSSP aims to foster engaged scholarship into the societal dimensions of emerging life sciences (Chadwick and Zwart 2013) (...) and via this thematic series, the journal provides a podium for authors who intend to address concrete issues from a ‘continental philosophical’ perspective, which may in- clude (post)phenomenology, hermeneutics, dialectics, (post)structuralism, psychoanalysis, critical theory and similar approaches. The series aims to contribute to a diagnostics of the present and a prognostics of the future, focusing on critical normative challenges (such as embodiment, intimate technologies, social justice, biopower, nanomedicine, human enhancement and the anthropocene) and building on the work of key authors such as Hegel (1830), Heidegger (1953, 1953/1954), Bachelard (1938), Canguilhem (1975), Lacan (1966, 1969-1970/1991), Habermas (1968), Serres (1972), Foucault (1969), Žižek (2006/2009), Stiegler (2010), Sloterdijk (2001, 2009) and others, but targeting con- crete up-to-date events and case studies against the backdrop of broader developments within the techno-scientific culture. (shrink)

Bringing together scholars from philosophy, bioethics, law, sociology, and anthropology, this topical collection explores how innovations in the field of biomedicine and the life sciences are challenging and transforming traditional understandings of human temporality and of the temporal duration, extension and structure of human life. The contributions aim to expand the theoretical debate by highlighting the significance of time and human temporality in different discourses and practical contexts, and developing concrete, empirically informed, and culturally sensitive perspectives. The collection (...) is structured around three main foci: the beginning of life, the middle of life, and later life. This structure facilitates an in-depth examination of specific technological and biographical contexts and at the same time allows an overarching comparison of relevant similarities and differences between life phases and fields of application. (shrink)

"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the people who (...) held it and the development of nineteenth-century science. Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an intimate knowledge of the individuals involved—from Goethe and the brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline Schelling—Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations—all tempered by personal relationships—altered scientific representations of nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology, culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's evolutionary theory. Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored, The Romantic Conception of Life alters how we look at Romanticism and nineteenth-century biology. (shrink)

Researchers in the life sciences often make uniqueness attributions; about branching events generating new species, the developmental processes generating novel traits and the distinctive cultural selection pressures faced by hominins. Yet since uniqueness implies non-recurrence, such attributions come freighted with epistemic consequences. Drawing on the work of Aviezer Tucker, we show that a common reaction to uniqueness attributions is pessimism: both about the strength of candidate explanations as well as the ability to even generate such explanations. Looking at two (...) case studies—elephant trunks and human teaching—we develop a more optimistic account. As we argue, uniqueness attributions are revisable claims about the availability of several different kinds of comparators. Yet even as researchers investigate the availability of such comparators, they are able to mobilize complex sets of empirical and theoretical tools. Rather than hindering scientific investigation, then, we argue that uniqueness attributions often spur the generation of a range of epistemic goods. (shrink)

Providing a compelling scholarly statement about the interrelation and pliability of values in the life sciences, medicine and health care, this volume aims to aid our understanding of the roles of power, knowledge production and economic action in the heavily scientised and economised areas of life science and medicine.

Empirical studies of life science research and biotechnologies in Asia show how assemblages of life articulate bioethics governance with global moralities and reveal why the global harmonization of bioethical standards is contrived.

Metaphors used to describe new technologies mediate public understanding of the innovations. Analyzing the linguistic, rhetorical, and affective aspects of these metaphors opens the range of issues available for bioethical scrutiny and increases public accountability. This article shows how such a multidisciplinary approach can be useful by looking at a set of texts about one issue, the use of a newly developed technique for genetic modification, CRISPRcas9.

Most life science research entails dual-use complexity and may be misused for harmful purposes, e.g. biological weapons. The Precautionary Principle applies to special problems characterized by complexity in the relationship between human activities and their consequences. This article examines whether the principle, so far mainly used in environmental and public health issues, is applicable and suitable to the field of dual-use life science research. Four central elements of the principle are examined: threat, uncertainty, prescription and action. Although charges (...) against the principle exist – for example that it stifles scientific development, lacks practical applicability and is poorly defined and vague – the analysis concludes that a Precautionary Principle is applicable to the field. Certain factors such as credibility of the threat, availability of information, clear prescriptive demands on responsibility and directives on how to act, determine the suitability and success of a Precautionary Principle. Moreover, policy-makers and researchers share a responsibility for providing and seeking information about potential sources of harm. A central conclusion is that the principle is meaningful and useful if applied as a context-dependent moral principle and allowed flexibility in its practical use. The principle may then inspire awareness-raising and the establishment of practical routines which appropriately reflect the fact that life science research may be misused for harmful purposes. (shrink)

The aim of the book is to explore common concerns regarding methodological individualism in different fields of the life sciences broadly construed. It will address conceptual problems regarding individuals and their relation and dependence on the collectivities they are part of and consider innovative new viewpoints, grounded in specific scientific projects that question the present descriptions and understanding and raise challenges. A wide variety of recent, influential contributions in the life sciences utilize notions of collectivity, sociality, rich interactions (...) and emergent phenomena, as essential explanatory tools to handle numerous persistent scientific questions in the life sciences. -/- Examples range from gene expression and regulation, the dynamics of bacterial populations, the ecological developmental biology of symbiosis, levels of selection, to communication, motion and patterns of behavior in diverse life forms, the role of social institutions and cultural dynamics in human evolution, and the psychological basis for social norms. The book is being structured so that fruitful and rewarding disciplinary interactions take place among researchers and scholars who have been concerned with overcoming methodological individualism. -/- The books includes a section of four papers on holobionts and the hologenome theory and a special memorial article on the work of the late Prof. Eshel Ben-Jacob authored by Herbert Levine. (shrink)

This paper criticizes the role of intuition-based ascriptions of cognition that are closely related to the ascription of mind. This practice hinders the explication of a clear and stable target domain for the cognitive sciences. To move forward, the proposal is to cut the notion of cognition free from such ascriptions and the intuition-based judgments that drive them. Instead, cognition is reinterpreted and developed as a scientific concept that is tied to a material domain of research. In this reading, cognition (...) becomes a changeable theoretical concept that can and must be adapted to the findings within this target domain. Taking humans as the best-established existing example of the relevant material target domain, this central case is extended to include all living systems. To clarify what it is about living systems that warrants their role as cognitive target domain, the new concept of cobolism is introduced as a complement to metabolism. Cobolism refers to the systematic ways in which each living system encompasses structures, processes and external events that maintain the fundamental metabolic processes that constitute the core of each living system. Cobolism is perfectly general, applies to bacterial and human cases alike, and provides a general format to describe wildly different cognitive organizations. It provides a clear target for the cognitive sciences to work on, turning them into what we can call the cognitive life sciences. (shrink)

The volume Philosophy and Life Sciences in Dialogue is a result of the IV. International Summer School Bioethics in Context, organized by Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and FernUniversität in Hagen. The book is exemplary in many ways. It contains 11 high-quality articles on fundamental themes and concepts with real philosophical depth – nature, autonomy, the future of trans- and post-humanism, the meta-topic of bioethics and its relations with life sciences. The authors present illuminating historical backgrounds as a (...) context to these theoretical discussions and a source of interesting or forgotten arguments. Most of the articles analyze recent and avantgarde scientific research with its social implications: CRISPR-Cas9 technology, digitalization of health care, justification of animal experiments, questions of human cloning, moral enhancement and the artificial synthesis of life. The main idea of the book is that bioethics is necessarily connected to human practice: it is not just knowledge but a living culture. (shrink)

Although scientific realism is the default position in the life sciences, philosophical accounts of realism are geared towards physics and run into trouble when applied to fields such as biology or neuroscience. In this paper, I formulate a new robustness-based version of entity realism, and show that it provides a plausible account of realism for the life sciences that is also continuous with scientific practice. It is based on the idea that if there are several independent ways of (...) measuring, detecting or deriving something, then we are justified in believing that it is real. I also consider several possible objections to robustness-based entity realism, discuss its relationship to ontic structural realism, and show how it has the potential to provide a novel response to the pessimistic induction argument. (shrink)

Against the background of the current discussion about self-organization theories and complexity theories and their application within biology and ecology, the question of teleology gains a new significance. Some scholars insist on the total elimination of any reference to teleology from the realm of the natural sciences. However, it seems especially hard to eradicate teleological expressions from scientific language when the issue of understanding living beings is at stake. For this reason, other scholars opt for a middle path that allows (...) for some teleological language. Yet, it is an open question whether teleological expressions are to be considered as playing a merely metaphorical or a necessary heuristic role in the sciences. Moreover, the ontological presuppositions, which underpin different positions in the debate, need to be depicted and analyzed. This paper aims at addressing the question of teleology within the life sciences by taking into account both Kant’s critical philosophy and Whitehead’s ontology. My analysis starts with Georg Toepfer’s distinction among different concepts of teleology and then focuses on the role of “internal purposiveness” (innere Zweckmäßigkeit) for biology today. I show how purposiveness (Zweckmäßigkeit; hereafter: ZM) corresponds to a very complex form of reciprocal causation (Wechselwirkung) rather than to any model of final causation. Drawing on Kant’s analysis of “natural purposes” in the Critique of Judgment as well as selforganization theory, I claim that reciprocal causation – however complex it might well be – is not sufficient to describe living beings adequately. However, since the natural sciences are still caught up in the presuppositions of modern scientistic and materialistic ontology, a step beyond mere efficient causation seems to be impossible within their methodological framework. And yet, as I will show, a genuine teleology of nature implies the idea of anticipation of totality. This kind of teleological consideration is presented at first in its role as a regulative concept in Kantian terms. Finally, I follow the path of Whitehead’s ‘philosophy of organism’ and claim for natural teleology the state of a necessary ontological presupposition. Whitehead’s ontology offers an ontological underpinning for teleological issues that, by avoiding any recourse to supernatural forces, invites life and natural sciences to a fruitful dialogue at the limit of their methodological boundaries, pressing them beyond their unreflected presuppositions. (shrink)

In this groundbreaking new study, Lowell Nissen explores the use of teleological language in the study of subjects such as behaviorism, negative feedback, and natural selection. He argues that all existing analyses fail to explain how teleological language can be used legitimately, and provides his own analysis in terms of intentionality.

Using animals for scientific research is a highly contentious issue that Continental philosophers engaging with 'the animal question' have been rightly accused of shying away from. Now, Wahida Khandker asks whether Continental approaches to animality and organic life will make us reconsider our treatment of non-human animals. By following its historical and philosophical development, she argues that the concept of 'pathological life' as a means of understanding organic life as a whole plays a pivotal role in refiguring (...) the human-animal distinction. She explores the significance of this across philosophy and the life sciences through the work of a number of key thinkers of life and process, from Henri Bergson to Donna Haraway. (shrink)

Offers a practical philosophy of the life sciences, showing how scientific reasoning can, in limited contexts, be translated into the language of philosophy, and how science can correct the philosophy of science.

The activities of the life sciences are essential to provide solutions for the future, for both individuals and society. Society has demanded growing accountability from the scientific community as implications of life science research rise in influence and there are concerns about the credibility, integrity and motives of science. While the scientific community has responded to concerns about its integrity in part by initiating training in research integrity and the responsible conduct of research, this approach is minimal. The (...) scientific community justifies itself by appealing to the ethos of science, claiming academic freedom, self-direction, and self-regulation, but no comprehensive codification of this foundational ethos has been forthcoming. A review of the professional norms of science and a prototype code of ethics for the life sciences provide a framework to spur discussions within the scientific community to define scientific professionalism. A formalization of implicit principles can provide guidance for recognizing divergence from the norms, place these norms within a context that would enhance education of trainees, and provide a framework for discussing externally and internally applied pressures that are influencing the practice of science. The prototype code articulates the goal for life sciences research and the responsibilities associated with the freedom of exploration, the principles for the practice of science, and the virtues of the scientists themselves. The time is ripe for scientific communities to reinvigorate professionalism and define the basis of their social contract. Codifying the basis of the social contract between science and society will sustain public trust in the scientific enterprise. (shrink)

This article presents an artistic and political experiment as an effort to advance democratic transactions in the life sciences. Artists built a ‘gender democratic labyrinth’ in Maastricht, in which scientists, women’s groups, people in general, artists, philosophers, politicians, journalists, clinical geneticists and many others interacted and negotiated on the creation of human embryos for medical-scientific research. By taking a gender perspective on the process of democratizing science, we aimed to create a space in which alterity and difference are constitutive (...) elements in the public exchanges on science and technology. The idea to build a labyrinth was theoretically based on the notion of agonistic democracy - in which pluralism is the result of contestations and divisions - and on a notion of science and technology as being contextualized and socialized. (shrink)

In this interview, Anne Fagot-Largeault discusses with Thierry Bardini her recollections of the life and work of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon. The discussion covers Simondon’s theory of individuation and considers its influences on contemporary thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze and François Laruelle. Fagot-Largeault situates Simondon’s thinking within the broader context of 20th-century biological research and the development of life sciences. Informed by her personal association and experiences working with Simondon, her reminiscences shed light on the unique character of (...) Simondon as a person and as a thinker. (shrink)

Over the course of the last three decades, computer simulations have become a major tool of doing science and engaging with the world, not least in an effort to predict and intervene in a future to come. Born in the context of the Second World War and the discipline of physics, simulations have long spread into most diverse fields of enquiry and technological application. This paper introduces a topical collection focussing on simulations in the life sciences. Echoing the current (...) state of tinkering, fast developments, segmentation of knowledge and interdisciplinary collaboration, and in an effort to bridge the science-humanities divide, the contributors to this collection come from multiple disciplinary backgrounds, including information studies, cognitive sciences, philosophy and biology. The ambiguous character of simulations, their cutting across scientific disciplines, analysis and prediction, understanding and doing, gave rise to their success in contemporary life sciences and has been the object of much scientific debate. One of the main aims of this topical collection, by contrast, is to call into question the assumption of an obvious use and easy transfer of methods between fields of knowledge as diverse as, e.g. physics and biology. The collection presents historical case studies from various biological sub-fields. The articles study how simulations are used and the ways they contribute specifically to our understanding of life. Taking up Sergio Sismondo’s description of simulations as “compromises” and “glue”, they also critically engage with the question of what exactly the life sciences have been gluing together over the last two decades. (shrink)

With In Search of Mechanisms, Carl F. Craver and Lindley Darden offer both a descriptive and an instructional account of how biologists discover mechanisms. Drawing on examples from across the life sciences and through the centuries, Craver and Darden compile an impressive toolbox of strategies that biologists have used and will use again to reveal the mechanisms that produce, underlie, or maintain the phenomena characteristic of living things. They discuss the questions that figure in the search for mechanisms, characterizing (...) the experimental, observational, and conceptual considerations used to answer them, all the while providing examples from the history of biology to highlight the kinds of evidence and reasoning strategies employed to assess mechanisms. At a deeper level, Craver and Darden pose a systematic view of what biology is, of how biology makes progress, of how biological discoveries are and might be made, and of why knowledge of biological mechanisms is important for the future of the human species. (shrink)